Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/781

 ETRURIA 765 Etruscan literary remains, as inscriptions on coins and tombs, fail to throw light on the question of their ethnological affinity, as the interpretation of the Etruscan language is still a matter of hypothesis. Dionysius of Halicar- nassus and Bochart regard the Etruscan as an aboriginal' language ; Freret and Sir William Betham make it Celtic; Ciampi and Kollar, Slavic; Micali, Albanese ; Passeri, Gori, and Lanzi derive it from the Greek and Latin, and hold that the Uinbric, Volscic, Oscic, and Samnitic are dialects of it ; O. Muller thinks it akin to the Greek ; others derive it from Rhaetia ; others make it cognate to the Basque or the Finnish ; and finally, Lami, Pfitzmaier, and others, suppose it to be Semitic, a hypoth- esis which in 1858 J. G. Stickel was thought to have demonstrated to be the truth. In 1873 Prof. Corssen announced that he was about to publish a work on the subject that would show entirely new results. Taylor's " Etruscan Re- searches " (London, 1874) again endeavors to establish a Turanian relationship. The alpha- bet is believed to consist of 21 letters, almost coincident in form with the ancient Greek letters, written from right to left, but cor- responding in value to those of the Hebrew, though not used as numerical signs. Of sev- eral hundred short funeral inscriptions known, 17 have been published as proofs of the Se- mitic character of the language ; some of them are bilingual, with a Latin part giving the name of the deceased. There are also in- scriptions on candelabra, drinking cups, and other utensils. Of inscriptions on coins there are but few. Under the Roman emperors the haruspices used Latin versions of Etruscan rituals. Such were the libri Etrusci, Etruscce disciplines (religion) ; rituals on the manner of building cities, temples, and altars ; on the sanctity of walls and gates; on the tribm, curice, military order, &c. ; fulgurales and haruspicini, and the prodigia ; Tagetici, on the ceremonies (cceremonm, from Ccere or Agylla) of the earth-born god Tages ; acherun- tici, on conciliation with the gods, &c. There were also ancient pastoral and augural songs. Varro preserved some fragments, and mentions Etruscan tragedies by Volumnius. The his- tories to which Varro alludes were probably superstitious inventions similar to those pre- served in Plutarch's life of Sulla. In the speech of the emperor Claudius, preserved on bronze plates at Lyons, is cited a version of the adventures of Servius Tullius from Etruscan authorities, and, as Niebuhr thinks, from native annals beginning with the year 407 B. C. It seems, however, that the Etruscan testimony adduced by Claudius is not entitled to credit. The scoffing and jocular Fescennine (so called from Fescennium, a city of Etruria) and Satur- nalian verses were also derived from the Tus- cans. Cicero, Aulus Gellius, Cascina, Nigidius Figulus, and some later Romans translated and explained various Etruscan books, of which we have but fragments. There is no doubt that the inhabitants of Etruria proper formed a confederacy of 12 cities with adjacent dis- tricts, which are supposed to have been the following: Casre (now Cerveteri, Old Csere) Tarquinii (in Roman history the cradle of the Tarquins), Rusellae (Roselle, remarkable for its monuments), Vetulonia (Torre Vecchia), Vola- terrae (Volterra), Arretium (Arezzo), Cortona Perusia (Perugia), Volsinii (Bolsena), Falerii (Civita- Castellana), Veii (Isola Farnese) and Clusium (Chiusi), the seat of King Porsena. They possessed flourishing colonies in Cor- sica, Ilva (Elba), and in Campania, where they are supposed to have founded (about 800 B. C.) a confederacy similar to that of Etruria. Their navy was powerful on the Mediterranean at a very early period ; a legend mentions an attack upon the Argo, the ship of the Argonauts, by Tyrrhenian mariners. Their commercial ves- sels visited the eastern shores of the Mediter- ranean. The inhabitants of Caere were dread- ed as pirates. Various remains attest their profi- ciency in the arts ; the frequently occurring rep- resentations of festive entertainments, games, races, and dances, accompanied by music, prove their love of recreation, no doubt fostered by the mildness of the climate. They also had national assemblies for religious and political purposes, celebrated at the temple of Voltumna in Volsinii. Their religion resembled in most of its conceptions the polytheism of the Greeks and Romans; it appears, however, to have been deeper, gloomier, and less fanciful than that of the former. The names of many of their deities, who were divided into higher or hidden and other gods, and were believed to reside in the remotest north, seem to mark the transition from the Grecian to the Roman forms. Tina (Jupiter) presides over the coun- cil of 12 consentes or complices, probably per- sonifications of the 1 2 constellations of the zo- diac. They had lunar and solar divisions of time, and cycles of more than a century. Of their numerous sacred books, the principal of which were believed to contain the revelations of the demon Tages, the so-called Acheron tic taught how to propitiate the gods, to delay fate, and to deify the soul. Many of their re- ligious rites, those of augury for instance, were adopted by the Romans, who also imitated their games, insignia, and triumphal distinctions. Their priests, called lucumos, appear at the same time as heads of noble families and as kings or rulers of cities. They formed the sen- ate of the confederacy, which seems to have consisted of loosely connected independent and sovereign members, at a later period ruled by magistrates chosen annually. The common people were dependent upon the priestly aristo- cratic families in a kind of feudal clientship, whose forms appear more servile than in the similar Roman institution. Freemen also oc- cur in the history of some of the confederate cities, but as a politically unimportant class. Walls of cities, sewers, vaults, subterranean tombs, and bridges are the only existing monu-